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House Mild (Not Mild!)

Today was my first attempt at creating a house mild. I wanted something that wasn't pale, but not stout like in colour. I was aiming for a 'post war' strength, that is sub 4%, nearer 3. My original recipe is in this post, but on the day I subbed out the pale for lager malt (as I had a bag open that I wanted to use up), and changed the sugars slightly as per below;

Lager Malt         2270g

Chocolate Malt 121g

Pale Crystal Malt 121g

Amber Malt         61g

Black Malt         61g

Demerara sugar       200g 

Golden Syrup          150g

The mash didn't go to plan at all. I had wanted to mash at 67°, batch sparge at 77°. I over heated the strike water, then let it cool to much, so the mash was at 65°. Additionally, something went wrong with the sparge and it kept sticking; once I fixed this, I only managed to get 18L after the boil. I suspect I didn't measure out the sparge water correctly. The end result was that the final gravity was 1040°, much higher than the 1033° I was aiming for. Obviously, this will result in a much stronger beer than planned. The sample looked good, and tasted very promising, so we will just have to see how we get on. I pitched Fermentis S04, which is a yeast I haven't used since my kit brewing days, with the FV sat in a water bath at 17.5° +/- 0.5°.

House lager update & House Mild

First off, a quick update on my house lager. This weekend, as it had been fermenting for a week, I though I would check how close to final gravity it was, as I was wondering if it was time to ramp up the temp for a diacetyl rest. All I can say is that this yeast (M76 Bavarian Lager Yeast) must be a slow burner, as it had only dropped to around 1030. At this rate, it will need 3 weeks or so to hit FG. Blimey! It was very active, so I don't think it had stalled. I'll check it again at the end of the week.

Next up, I'm going to have a shot at developing a house dark(ish) mild. My recipie at present is as below, which I ope to get on Weds or Thursday this week.

HOME BREW RECIPE:
Title: Meadow View JDL Mild

Brew Method: All Grain
Style Name: Dark Mild
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 20 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 26 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.022
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)


STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.034
Final Gravity: 1.008
ABV (standard): 3.45%
IBU (tinseth): 27.76
SRM (morey): 18.83
Mash pH: 5.75

FERMENTABLES:
2.27 kg - Maris Otter Pale (76.2%)
0.12 kg - Crystal 45L (4%)
0.12 kg - Chocolate (4%)
0.06 kg - Amber (2%)
0.06 kg - Black Malt (2%)
0.35 kg - Golden Syrup - (late addition)  (11.7%)

HOPS:
25 g - Fuggles, Type: Pellet, AA: 4.5, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 18.35
15 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 9.4

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 67 C, Time: 60 min, Amount: 10.5 L
2) Sparge, Temp: 77 C, Time: 15 min, Amount: 20.1 L
Starting Mash Thickness: 4 L/kg

YEAST:
Mangrove Jack - New World Strong Ale M42

House Lager update

Having been away working all weekend, I wasn't able to check on the lager. When I returned on Sunday, nothing seemed to be happening, so as this was 48 hours later (almost) I bottled it and increased the temp in the fermenting fridge to 12°. Today (Tuesday) it's fermenting away happily. I don't know if the MJ yeast has a long lag time, perhaps I should have been more patient. I'll test the gravity at the weekend to see how far is got and if it's ready for its diactyl rest. Then crash cool, bottle, carb up and lager.

Up next will either be a Belgian golden , double or and English light mild.

First brew in ages - House Lager - version 1

It been a while since I blogged. Due to work commitments, brewing time has been non existent. That changed today with a quick cheeky lager. Here is the recipe;

 Meadow View Lager

ager
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 20L (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 26.2L
Boil Gravity: 1.034
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)


STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.009
ABV (standard): 4.67%
IBU (tinseth): 40.91
SRM (morey): 4.15
Mash pH: 5.92

FERMENTABLES:
2.5 kg - Pale 2-Row (62.5%)
1 kg - Lager (25%)
0.5 kg - Munich (12.5%)

HOPS:
15 g - Magnum, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 15, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 30.03
15 g - Magnum, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 15, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 10.89

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 66 C, Time: 60 min, Amount: 16 L
2) Sparge, Temp: 75 C, Time: 15 min, Amount: 16.1 L
Starting Mash Thickness: 4 L/kg

YEAST:
Mangrove Jack - Bohemian Lager Yeast M84 x2 (Edit - that was a mistake, it was M76 Bavarian Lager Yeast)

Fermentation Temp: 10 - 15 C

The thin mash was an experiment. I brought my mash tun from a chap on eBay - and he had said it benefited from a slightly thin mash, so I thought I'd give it a go. Certainly,  the actual pre-boil gravity of 1.038 against 1034 predicted suggests it doesn't harm efficiency.

I used of Magnum instead of a more traditional German hops because I got some cheap hops (and yeasts, and a few other bits and bobs) from a home brew shop that was closing down. Magnum was one of them, so I wanted to give them a spin in something, and I have read about lagers that use them so it seemed like a good idea. They certainly smell fantastic. They are mainly a bittering hop, but I really liked their aroma.

The MJ M76 Bavarian Lager Yeast was one of the yeasts I got cheap - 50p a pack! I decided to use 2 and ferment at the bottom end of the recommended range. That is 9-14°, so I chose  10° as it gives me a bit of wiggle room.

Everything went really well. The brew day was worked around a day working from home, so things like mash times might have been a few mins over if I was in the middle of something. Which I was, a lot, but they were there or there about. One thing I did for the first time was to whirlpool the wort after cooling to try and gather the trub in the middle of the boiler and preventing its transfer to the FV. I am astounded how well this worked ~ the wort entering the FV was almost totally clear / bright. Now, if you don't do this, this trub falls to the bottom of the FV anyway, so you could argue whats the point? Well, I want to get into liquid yeasts / re-culturing yeasts from the FV trub, so the less muck in there the better.

The immersion chiller got the wort down to low 20's°, it was then put in the fermentation fridge, which  was bringing it down about  2° an hour, so the yeast was pitched at 15.5° which means it will be around 10° by the time it has re-hydrated and got going.

I am now away for work for 3 days, so I'll just have to hope it starts and ferments away happily at this temp, as I won't be there to change anything!

Brews update

The Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer is carbed up and ready. It tastes really promising already, which might suggest that the CML California Common yeast needs less lagering / cold conditioning than their Kölsch yeast. It's an interesting beer.

The Barkley Perkins IPA is also ready, and looks and tastes absolutely amazing (see pic). I'm only drinking at the weekends, so I'm just having a few every week, and it will be interesting to see how this improves. The over attenuating MJ New World Strong yeast hasn't appeared to ruin this at all; but it would be very interesting to brew this with a yeast that doesn't attenuate as much to see how it differs.

I now have nothing brewing or conditioning (well, apart from 2 more WOW's ~ Apple, Grape & Raspberry and Apple, Grape and Cranberry), so I'm planning my next 2 brews. Both will be some kind of lager, as I got a job lot of Mangrove Jack lager yeast from a store that was closing down, and want to take advantage of the last of the cold conditioning weather!

1934 Barkley Perkins Draught Lager update

This is how it looks after just over 14 weeks. It tastes great, you can taste the Saaz, but it's as clear as a bell and very, very moreish.

I also bottled my WOW's, and the next day knocked up two more, one double grape and apple, one grape, apple and cranberry.

Hewitt's Brothers, Grimsby

I am always interested in the brewing history of the region in which I live. The largest brewery around here must have been Hewitt Brothers in Grimsby, who at their peak supplied over 300 pubs. I'd love to get my hands on some of their brewing records and have a go at recreating one of their beers. I wonder if they used the Yorkshire square method? Wyatt was their yeast like? In the meantime, here is a photo of the brewery in it's prime.

1928 Barclay Perkins IPA

There is something about this recipe that jumped out at me from Shut up about Barklay Perkins. It sort of shouted 'this is what IPA'a used to be' before they became overly strong flower bombs. I can't find American 6-row malt anywhere in the UK, but read somewhere on a substitution chart to try UK lager malt. I had hook head pale and lager in stock so they were used. Finally, I don't have actual #3 brewers invert to hand, so made a substitute using the unrefined cane sugar and the dilution method here. One of the yeasts Kristen English suggests is Notty, so I used Mangrove Jacks New World Strong, which is really their Northern English Brown, and is meant to have similar characteristics to Notty.

So the final recipe was;

HOME BREW RECIPE:
Title: 1928 Barclay Perkins IPA

Brew Method: All Grain
Style Name: English IPA
Boil Time: 120 min
Batch Size: 20 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 29 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.034
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)


STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.012
ABV (standard): 4.94%
IBU (tinseth): 40.46
SRM (morey): 10.37

FERMENTABLES:
2.43 kg - Hook Head Pale Malt(57.3%)
0.75 kg - Irish Lager (17.7%)
0.56 kg - Flaked Corn (13.2%)
0.5 kg - #3 Brewers invert sub (11.8%)

HOPS:
8 g - Challenger, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.5, Use: Boil for 120 min, IBU: 10.83
32 g - Fuggles, Type: Pellet, AA: 4.5, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 21.04
17 g - Fuggles, Type: Pellet, AA: 4.5, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 8.59
8 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5, Use: Dry Hop for 0 days

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 67 C, Time: 90 min, Amount: 11.2 L
2) Sparge, Temp: 72 C, Time: 15 min, Amount: 23.5 L
Starting Mash Thickness: 3 L/kg

YEAST:
Mangrove Jack - New World Strong Ale M42

My weighing scales packed up, I suspect a flat battery, just as I was going to weigh the last hop additions, both fuggles. Luckily, I had an unopened 100g bag of them. So I split it in half visially to get 50g, the visually split this into thirds as the two additions add up to 50g in a one third / two third ratio, give or take.

I dod the whole mash / boil outside to minimise the smell in the house (I usually mach in the conservatory), so I'm not sure how that affected the temperature retention in my mash tun, I really must get a digital thermometer with a probe so I can record this sort of stuff. Finally, I treated the water using Grahams Wheelers calculator to give a 'Dry Pale Ale' profile.

All went well, all be it a very long day with the long boil and mash times. I hit exactly 1050, and my pre-boil gravity was within a point as well. There was tons of cold break / trub / gunk in the boiler, however, which I didn't want to carry through into the FV, so I only realised 18.5 / 19L into the FV rather than 20, but I'm not that fussed. The immersion chiller got the wort down to 16.5° before I knew it, so the yeast was pitched at that temp and the fermenting fridge set to 18°. 18 hours later, there was some signs of life, but by 24 hours it was in full swing. Really looking forward to this one!

Brews update

1939 Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer

 After 5 days of airlock activity at 14°, it slowed and stopped, suggesting the primary phase of fermentation was well over and it was nearing the end and it was diactyl rest time. So the fermenting fridge was set to 18° and left. The airlock started to show activity when I checked again, by which time it has reached 16.5° but had stopped a day later, so I'm hoping this was dissolved CO2 escaping not fermentation starting again as it had stalled.

WOW Wines

Both appeared to have finished fermenting and are slowly clearing. I need to get some finings as mine are out of date, then I'll rack them for clearing.

1939 Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer

Today's brew was 1939 Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer, from Ron's blog, but in my case I took it from Let's Brew!, which is a fantastic book in my opinion.

Firstly, I plugged the recipe into Brewers Friend. I found that to get the correct colour as specified by Ron, I would need to use my dark crystal malt, then it was bang on. The hop additions were Saaz / Saaz / Saaz at 90, 60 and 30 mins. I'm afraid I didn't have enough in stock so for the 90 min addition I substituted challenger in a quantity to give the same bitterness. I'm hoping that after 90 mins, it will only be bitterness that this addition contributes. I aimed for 21L in the FV. This gave;

FERMENTABLES:
4.1 kg - United Kingdom - Lager (89.1%)
0.5 kg - United Kingdom - Dark Crystal 80L (10.9%)

HOPS:
15 g - Challenger, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.5, Use: Boil for 90 min, IBU: 18.89
25 g - Saaz, Type: Pellet, AA: 3.5, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 12.12
25 g - Saaz, Type: Pellet, AA: 3.5, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 9.31

The major departure from the original is that I don't have a lagering plant, unlike Barklay Perkins, so I decided to use the faux lager method, with Crossmyloof's California Common yeast, double pitched and fermented at 14°.

This was my first go at water treatment, so CRS was used to reduce alkalinity, and gypsum added, to give the 'bitter' water profile in Grahams Wheeler's calculator. That seemed about right for the malt bill.

All went well, but I ended up with 20.5L instead of 21, and the OG was 1049, which is slightly over. The wort was really clear ~ much clearer than I usually end up with, and if anything, I returned less of the first runnings back into the mash tun than usual. All I can think is that this is the first time I have used base malt from The Home Brew Company ~ hook head Irish lager malt. I wonder if their crush settings suit the bazooka filter on my mash tun better?

I am now drinking homebrew waiting for my brew fridge to cool the wort the last couple of degrees to pitching temp (20° ). The fridge will then be left on to rapidy get it down to the fermenting temp of 14° .

Apple, grape & raspberry WOW #2

Another batch of this one.

700g of sugar instead of the intended 600g, last minute decision, to see if it thins it out a bit, as the last one took a long time to condition and the boss thought it was a bit 'syrupy' - although adding more sugar might seem daft, I'm hoping it ferments out and leaves it a little drier. The pineapple and apple WOW is still going crazy. The lava lamp like rise and fall of fruit sediment particles caused by the CO2 bubbling is quite hypnotic. Usually, my beer ferments in FV's that aren't transparent, so it's interesting to see quite how turbulent it gets in there when the yeast is in full swing.

I might get a chance to do a brew tomorrow...

Pineapple and apple WOW

I haven't had any time to brew beer, but I managed to throw a WOW together. Unlike all the previous fruit juice wines I've done, this one doesn't contain any grape juice. This could be a winner of it turns out ok, as we usually do our food shopping in Aldi who don't stock grape juice. The recipe was;

1 X 500ml of Pineapple Juice
2 X 500ml of Apple Juice
600g of sugar
1 TSP each of nutrient, yeast, pectolase, citric acid and tannin plus 1/2 TSP glycerol.

The yeast was Young's Super Wine Yeast Compound.

It took off fairly quickly, and is now bubbling away happily.

Day 1

Day 3

Crown cap bottle labels

For me, labelling up my brews is something I always think about doing, and have designed labels on websites such as beer labalizer, but never get around to. This is mainly because of two reasons ~ the first is that they use a lot of paper, and thus ink, so can work out surprisingly expensive to print on an inkjet printer ~ at 4 labels per A4 sheet, your looking at 10 or so pages of full colour printing for a full brew length. The second reason is that after agonisingly removing the commercial labels from my bottles, it's quite nice not to have to do that again. Ever. The solution came by way of this thread on the home brew forum.

The idea is to print circular labels that are the correct size to be stuck onto the crown cap of your bottles. You can get a full brew length's worth on a single sheet of A4, and you throw away the thing they are stuck to when you drink the beer, so the bottles remain label free. Additionally, what is in the bottle is easily identifiable from above, which is useful if they are in a crate or low shelf.

Here's how I did it;

1. Design and print the labels

I use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, so I had access to 'gLabels'. This allows me to design and print a sheet of 24mm round labels using the 'Endisch 6500024x' template for 24mm round labels . Obviously, on a 24mm round label, you are limited as to the amount of text you can fit in, but I have found that I can easily fit the batch number, beer type and bottling date on them. This is all I need when deciding what to drink, the rest is in my brewing notes and can be found using the batch number.

2. Print out a sheet of labels and 'punch' them out

To do this, you need a 1'' or 25mm punch. These are available from hobbycraft, and various other places. I received this one as a Christmas present from the kids ~ it creates labels with a patterned edge (much like a crown caps!) but they are also available as normal circles. They aren't overly expensive ( a few quid) if you shop around. Its the orange thing in this photo. Lining up the punch with the circular labels is easier if you hold the punch upside down, and you can then see when the paper is aligned. It's easier to do than explain. You may also need to trim off the non printer top of the paper with scissors so that the punch can 'reach' the first line of labels, but once you have done this you can punch away.

3. Glue them on.

I used craft PVA diluted in water ~ just a tiny amount of PVA in a fair amount of water to get a liquid with a consistency similar to milk. I then painted this liquid liberally onto the top of the battle cap, placed a label on, and pressed it down. That's it!

Happy new year!

In with the new year ~ and a few brewing updates.

• 1954 Whitbread Double Brown ~ this has had an age to condition now, and is still poor. I've come to the conclusion that I used the wrong yeast (too fruity) and hops (too flowery). Also, I'm not so sure that the gravy browning is as tatse neutral as I thought. No, not in a 'it tastes of gravy' sort of way, but in a wierd caramelly kind of way. Not a success. 
• John's ESB ~ this has some kind of chill haze that has developed in the bottle. I'm also not so keen on the esters now it has had time to mature; I won't be fermenting Liberty Bell at these temps again. Underneath, however, there is the basis of a good recipe, so I'll adapt this and try it again.
• East Street Best Extra stout ~ this is ready to drink and is really good. Win win!
• 1934 Barclay Perkins Draught Lager - this is now conditioning. If you remember, I was going to brew this recipe again but wth CML California Common yeast rather than the Kolsch yeast I used here. However, I have now got my head around water treatment, and all received wisdom suggests that this will improve my beer no end. It seems daft to brew beer that is less perfect than I can make it, so a side by side comparison wouldn't be fair. I'm jut going to crack on and use the CC yeast to brew a different Barclay Perkins lager, probably their Sparking Ale from one of Ron Pattinson's books.
• Whats up next? Well, I fancy brewing a pale mild, and am nearly there with the recipe. I had said I was going to bottle all my ales from now on, but am tempted to ung this one in a King Keg. We'll see.